Our family van life requires cleaning up spills and coffee to keep the energy going to keep up with the kids. These are a few products we recommend.
Cleaning Up the Spills
Highly recommend the Prodyne Paper Towel Holder. We were looking for a paper towel holder that was easy to install, yet low profile and light weight. The beauty of the Prodyne Paper Towel Holder is that it is light enough, yet with a big enough footprint that it can be installed with adhesive strips (we use 3M VHB tape and its awesome!). It’s available here, and is currently (11/2018) a steal at under $10.
Van Coffee is Essential
For us, coffee is an essential aspect of family van life, and the power demands of a drip coffee maker are too great for the typical vanlife power system. Fortunately, pour-over coffee is supposedly superior to drip coffee – and as a bonus, requires no electricity. We went with the Ol’ Blue Pour Over Coffee Kettle paired with a Melitta Pour Over Coffee Cone Brewer.
The Ol’ Blue Pour Over Coffee Kettle is a solid stainless steel kettle with built in thermometer in the lid. They have 100% satisfaction guarantee, plus you can save 20% right now (11/2018) at Amazon with an instant coupon! The photo above also has a picture of our cord/ribbon hack for quieting down the stove while driving. You can read more about this and other hacks on this post.
The Melitta Pour Over Coffee Cone Brewer is an affordable, simple pour over cone. It’s made by trusted Italian coffee expert Melitta, with the added benefit of replacement filters being available at most grocery stores. It’s BPA free too! You can get it for under $10 at Amazon.
Colored Pencils Holder
Like all kids, our kids are quite the artists. We have never set off on a van trip without paper and colored pencils. We’ve been through two versions of a colored pencils holder, now we use a metal organizer with a small handle and two carabiners clipped to the driver’s seat headrest. This is better than the first try, which fell apart after a few months. Now it’s accessible art anytime in this family van.
Thanks for checking out our post, we hope it inspired some DIY van ideas.
